The morning’s crucial FP3 session was an extremely successful one for Team SUZUKI ECSTAR as Andrea Iannone managed to top the session and prove once again how strong his pace is. The Italian was just a tenth off setting a new circuit record. Alex Rins worked hard in the morning session to build on his lap time and put himself into the Top 10, allowing passage to Q2. The top 11 riders were covered by just 0.477, a taste of things to come for the afternoon qualifying sessions.

With the sun blazing down and the track running very hot, Andrea Iannone and Alex Rins opted for a medium-soft tyre combination and aimed for two runs in the short 15 minute session. Although both riders started well, they found themselves bumped down the order when the chequered flag came out. Iannone will start the race from the third row in 8th, and Rins will be one row behind in 11th. Both riders were only half a second from the pole time.

Davide Brivio – Team Manager
“I think we worked quite well in terms of race preparation, and we have good pace with both riders. Unfortunately, in the qualifying we couldn’t use our potential. Both riders couldn’t really attack for the lap time, we had a better potential but we ended up 8th and 11th, so it will be more difficult tomorrow. But if we can build up more good pace we can try to recover; get good starts and try to make up positions during the race.”

Andrea Iannone
“I think it’s a positive weekend for us so far, especially as we’ve improved on the tyre life and consistency, and this is the most important thing for us – yesterday we struggled in this area. I think we need to work a little bit more in this way and we’ll try something tomorrow morning. In FP4 I rode well and had good pace, but it’s important to remain consistent for the whole race, the second part of the race will be important. I expected more in qualifying but with the hot temperatures I struggled more and we had some spinning. Tomorrow I’ll try my best and try to get to the top.”

Alex Rins
“We missed out on doing one fast lap, but I think you can see on the time sheets that we are competitive with used tyres. It will be an interesting race tomorrow and we will try to give our best from the start and try to recover positions. After that we need to see how the tyres are, because here they drop off quite quickly and after 12 or 13 laps the race will change a lot. Here everybody is so close on times, so qualifying has been difficult. But our race pace is good and consistent.”